RADIO
Jon Anderson highlights a handful of fantasy baseball hitter targets for deep leagues that are being drafted much too late early on.
It's January! We are barreling towards the draft season, and for some of the more ornery folk, the draft season has already begun. Typically, at this time of year, most of the drafts being completed are on The NFBC. A lot of these drafts are deep leagues, 50-round drafts with no trading or free agents. This means a ton more players are being drafted (some of these leagues are 15-teamers as well, meaning 750 players get drafted). This works to make the ADP pretty soft as you get deep into the drafts.
I wanted to write a post that looked at picks 300-600 or so in these drafts and locates some hitters that are projecting much better than their ADP suggests. These names are going to be "boring," so if you're the type of drafter that likes to buy lottery tickets to fill your bench spots (young prospects that can break out if given the opportunity and the like), these names won't be for you. But there is something to be said for those boring veterans that have proven they can at the very least stay in a Major League lineup and contribute in some way.
There's no shortage of talk about potential breakout prospects around the fantasy baseball scene, so if you're interested in that - you'll find it. For now, let's talk about these boring veterans that are projecting much better than their ADP suggests.
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Max Kepler, Minnesota Twins
| Player Info | JonPGH Projection | |||||||
| Player | ADP | Hitter Rk | PA | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG |
| Max Kepler | 509 | 222 | 515 | 61 | 17 | 60 | 7 | .266 |
Another year, another Kepler appearance on a list like this. Over the last two full seasons, he has managed just 105 runs, 28 homers, 97 RBI, 13 steals, and a .218 batting average. That line would get you somewhere if it came over one season, but it's taken him 936 plate appearances to do it - so that's pretty poor production.
The biggest point of good news for Kepler is the removal of the shift. He was shifted 90% of the time last year, and he hit a ton of ground balls into that shift (47% GB% with the shift on). His BABIP in 2021 was .225, and last season it was .249. These are low numbers, but ones we have come to expect from him.
The lefty posted the highest GB% of his career last year, and that led to his homer production being cut in half. Prior to 2022, he was a fly-ball hitter, going for just a 37% GB% in 2021. He's been all over the place.
What we know about Kepler is he'll get starts against right-handed pitching, which is about two-thirds of the league. He doesn't strike out much (15%), he does have a decent amount of swing speed in the rank (a 10.5% Brl% in 2021), and he can run better than average (64th percentile sprint speed). Maybe the 17-homer, .266 batting average projection there is overly optimistic - but that's what the model spits out when we even out his GB% and take into account the lack of shifts. I don't think Kepler is likely to kill a team after pick 500, and there's certainly an upside for him to be a difference-maker that late.
Mike Yastrzemski, San Francisco Giants
| Player Info | JonPGH Projection | |||||||
| Player | ADP | Hitter Rk | PA | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG |
| Mike Yastrzemski | 474 | 211 | 555 | 76 | 20 | 65 | 6 | .251 |
Things went horribly for Yastrzemski last year, as he had the worst year of his young career by far, slashing .214/.305/.392. His career line now sits at .242/.326/.465 - so that itself is enough reason to believe in a bounce-back campaign is on the horizon.
He was also a hitter the league liked to shift on (81%), so there will be more space for base hits in 2023 in this case as well. His HR/FB dropped to 10.6% last year, well below his career mark of 14.9%, and the BABIP was also quite low at .261.
What we have seen from Yas every year he's been in the bigs is a lot of fly balls (45% career) and a good barrel rate (10.6%). The guy can hit the ball hard in the air, and he doesn't strike out a ton either (25%).
There are some concerns with the playing time now that Mitch Haniger and Michael Conforto have arrived, but you won't find too many more injury-prone outfielders than those two names, and Yastrzemski is still Roster Resource's pick for starting centerfielder on this team even with all of that going on. There should be enough playing time here to give Mike the chance to massively beat this pick 474 ADP, so I'm in on him as a reserve outfielder.
Garrett Cooper, Miami Marlins
| Player Info | JonPGH Projection | |||||||
| Player | ADP | Hitter Rk | PA | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG |
| Garrett Cooper | 626 | 284 | 571 | 60 | 15 | 63 | 0 | .257 |
This is another guy that gets recommended as a late-round pick every year but we're back again. The projections make him a decent contributor in four categories, the only downside being the goose egg in steals. Over the last three seasons, Cooper has posted barrel rates of 10.1%, 10.8%, and 10.7% while managing strikeouts at the same time (23.3%, 27.2%, 25.4%). What has kept him off of the fantasy radar is health. He managed 469 plate appearances last year, which was the best mark of his career. Even in that elevated time, he managed just 37 runs, nine homers, and 50 RBI.
That's not a guy you want to start in any kind of league, but if you have to pick 50 players, you could certainly do worse than Cooper after pick 600. The barrel rate shows that there's power upside here, and the batting average should stay useful (.274 career, 43% hard-hit rate in his carer). Cooper is much more talented than pick 626 suggests, and some health will go a long way to making him a slam-dunk pick that late.
Carlos Santana, Pittsburgh Pirates
| Player Info | JonPGH Projection | |||||||
| Player | ADP | Hitter Rk | PA | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG |
| Carlos Santana | 638 | 289 | 509 | 58 | 16 | 64 | 1 | .241 |
I'm beating the "shift ban" drum here, but Santana is set to benefit from that as the league shifted on him in nearly all of his PAs as a lefty last year. The Pirates saw an opportunity there and scooped him up, and PNC Park does offer a short porch for left-handed pull hitters.
The counting stats are unlikely to be there, as we can see here with him failing to reach even 65 runs or RBI (although this is assuming he's not a full-time player, which he very well could be). He had a nice 9.3% barrel rate last year with a 45% hard-hit rate, so he hasn't stopped hitting the ball hard with age.
I can see a season where Santana plays 150 games, raises his batting average because of the shift ban, and hits 20 homers as a clean-up hitter. That would certainly justify a top-600 pick in fantasy leagues, and right now he's going well after that.
Brendan Donovan, St. Louis Cardinals
| Player Info | JonPGH Projection | |||||||
| Player | ADP | Hitter Rk | PA | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG |
| Brendan Donovan | 419 | 204 | 543 | 64 | 8 | 71 | 10 | .277 |
Donovan debuted for the Cardinals in 2022 and played all over the field. Because of that flexibility, he was able to rack up 467 plate appearances and score 64 runs on a strong .281 batting average. There's very little power here with his 3.4% barrel rate and 107 mph max exit velocity, but the contact ability is great (84%), and he should be able to stay in the lineup with all of the different positions he can it into it.
I don't see a path to 90 runs or 25 steals or even 12 homers, but a full-season line of 75 runs, 10 homers, and 15 steals seems like it's in the range of outcomes - and you can do a whole lot worse than that for a 30th-round pick. He also offers the fantasy flexibility of being able to slide him in nearly anywhere you suffer an injury in your starting lineup. I'll have some shares!
Other Fantasy Baseball Hitters I Considered Writing Up
- Jeimer Candelario, Washington Nationals
- Ramon Urias, Baltimore Orioles
- Wil Myers, Cincinnati Reds
- Yandy Diaz, Tampa Bay Rays
- Joey Votto, Cincinnati Reds
- Jorge Soler, Miami Marlins
- Austin Meadows, Detroit Tigers
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